Diary of 1st Lieutenant Daniel L. Ambrose: July 9, 1865

After weeks of anxious waiting for the orders and the completing of the rolls, on the ninth day of July, 1865, the Seventh Illinois Veteran Volunteer Infantry is mustered out of the United States service. The same evening we cross the Ohio river and take the cars at Jeffersonville, Indiana, for Springfield, Illinois, where we arrive on the 11th of July and go into camp near Camp Butler, and remain there until the 18th, when we receive our pay and final discharge, and to our homes return to enjoy again the peace and quiet of civil life.

Kind reader, our task is done; through more than four years of war and carnage unknown to but few nations, we have gone step by step to tell the story of the Seventh in those turbulent years—"years that saw this nation brought up from darkness and bondage, to light and liberty." Our mind now reverts, and we remember when they fell—remember where their life blood ebbed away, while it was yet the spring-time of life with them.

"But it was duty."

"Some things are worthless, and some others so good,

That nations who buy them pay only in blood;

For Freedom and Union each man owes his part,

And these warriors have paid their share all warm from the heart.

"For it was duty."

As the years of peace roll in, may America's triumphant and happy people cherish their names, and passing the scenes of their glory and their last struggle in their country's cause, may they drop tears to their memory, remembering that they helped to save this union in those days of war's wrathful power. In uncoffined graves, among strangers they are now resting, and no chiseled stones stand there to tell the wandering pilgrims of freedom where they sleep. Hence no epitaphs are theirs, but they need none, for these are written in the hearts of their countrymen. Farewell, ye brave-hearted men! Farewell, bright hopes of the past; farewell! farewell, noble comrades who sleep in the sunny south! Peace to the ashes of the Seventh's noble fallen; peace, eternal peace to the ashes of every fallen soldier who went down in America's great crusade for freedom, truth, and the rights of men!

"How sleep the brave who sink to rest,
With all their country's wishes blest!
When spring with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck the hallowed mound,
She then shall dress a sweeter sod,
Than fancy's feet have ever trod.
By fairy hands their knell is rung,
By forms unseen their dirge is sung,
Their honor comes a pilgrim gray,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay,
And freedom shall awhile repair,
To dwell a weeping hermit there.

"On fame's eternal camping ground,
Their silent tents are spread,
And glory guards with solemn rounds,
The bivouac of the dead."

SOURCE: abstracted from Daniel Leib Ambrose, History of the Seventh Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry, p. 313-15